In recent years it has become increasingly obvious that there is a need for alternative, community-based treatment programs that could supplement or replace institutional programs for delinquent and pre-delinquent youths. Thus, since 1967 we have been developing and evaluating a Teaching-Family model program at Achievement Place, a community-based, community-directed, family-style, group-home treatment program for six to eight adjudicated adolescents. The Achievement Place program is administered by two teaching-parents (a married couple) who have been specially trained to operate the program and to teach the youths more appropriate behavior. The treatment program is designed to provide a maximum amount of motivation and instruction to the youths when they first enter the program. As the youths develop skills and self-control, the structured elements of the program are reduced and replaced by a more natural set of feedback conditions. Because the youths all come from the local community the teaching-parents are able to work with the youths' parents and teachers to solve problems occurring in the home and school settings to prepare the youths for return to their natural or foster families. The preliminary results of the Achievement Place program indicate that it is effective in correcting a number of social, academic, prevocational, and self-care behavior problems. In addition, the youths who have participated in the program show a greater reduction in offenses during treatment than a small sample of youths who were placed in comparison group home programs. Conclusions on post-treatment outcomes are still quite tentative due to the small sample of Achievement Place and comparison programs. The proposed research program will focus on the active dissemination of the program by providing technical assistance to communities and state agencies, collection of follow-up data on the youths who have left the program, extention of the model to girls. Follow-up evaluation on the youths who have participated in programs that are direct replications of the Teaching-Family model and on youths participating in non Teaching Family comparison group homes will also continue to be carried out.